IGO: Sudden Snow Read Online Free
Author: RaeLynn Blue
melted into hysterical crying. Her life had been watered down to a sack full of things and a few portable drives. Mobile. Transitive.
Halting her tears, she shoved those emotions back to the locked section of her heart. Wiping her damp cheeks, she got up and went to the sliver of floor-to-ceiling elongated glass on either side of the central wall. Scattered stars lit up the surrounding dark like diamonds cast carelessly onto plush ebony velvet. She loved the view. Space comforted her and humbled her each time she took in its spectacular expanse. Dwarfed by its enormity, Cricket had discovered long ago that words were sorely inadequate to describe it or the feelings wrought from its beauty.
The outpost rotated slowly. Like a planet it deceived one into thinking it was stationary. A floating gray steel ballerina, frozen in a swirl, arms in a circle, spinning in the black sea of space, the outpost was very much active. It had been her home, if she could call it that. But no longer.
She couldn’t even say she missed it. It was familiar, but not a place where her roots reached deep. To be honest, the post was more continuous office than home. When she thought of home, images of a housing container, complete with a husband, a pet, and maybe a well-manicured lawn came rushing forward. Not a seven-hundred-square-foot box onboard an IGO space station.
Things had changed so suddenly Cricket couldn’t quite believe it. She had a hard time trying to wrap her head around it. Numb, she briskly rubbed her arms. What would happen to the other scientists? Ganor?
She sighed. Aggravated with the direction her thoughts had taken, Cricket abruptly changed her focus. Too long she’d been skimming on engaging her life to its fullest, and now her entire life had been cast into the fray. She’d been kicked off her project on Io and arrested. Sergeant Snow could make me feel alive again. He’s got a lightning rod packaged for me. I bet he’d set every single icy block in my belly to jelly .
The roguish hunk pushed her long dormant buttons. She hadn’t been struck by anyone like him in years. Several long years, if she allowed herself to think about it for more than a brief moment, had gone by without so much as a kiss.
At that moment, the spacecraft shuddered and she spilled to the floor. Bathed in the battle mode’s scarlet warning blare, she struggled to her feet and held onto the bed’s footboard for stability.
“Warning, battle red. Warning, battle red. Engage safety protocol Delta 5019-Zebra.”
Cricket grimaced and went to the media center. At once she keyed in her IGO login and called up the outer visuals. Her fingers danced over the touch sensitive screen which, like a well choreographed partner, flickered accordingly. Displays dashed on and hastily vanished as she sped through the options. She managed to keep her balance as the spacecraft lurched ferociously. No doubt the pilot had engaged defensive maneuvers, and the commanding crew had it all under control.
Once she was logged in, the outside visual feed flickered once and the shower of fired laser blasts from the post lit up the sky. The streams whisked by as the spacecraft danced and tumbled, flipped and skidded by them. Poor imagery gave the feed a grainy distorted quality. She could barely make out the circular sphere of the outpost; its gray titanium flesh eerily bespeckled by static. It grew smaller as the distance increased between them. Static continued to rip through the video, bathing the screen in frosted white before winking back into feeble and fluttering imagery.
Staring at the streaming shots and the whirling maneuvering outside, Cricket shook her head in disbelief. Wang wanted her so badly that he risked his own men and those innocents onboard The Inquiry . Project Ganor hadn’t been a large, commercial or economic item for the IGO. A small grant-funded project with a lofty, long-term goal, to be sure, but it was obtainable -- in fifty years. The
Halting her tears, she shoved those emotions back to the locked section of her heart. Wiping her damp cheeks, she got up and went to the sliver of floor-to-ceiling elongated glass on either side of the central wall. Scattered stars lit up the surrounding dark like diamonds cast carelessly onto plush ebony velvet. She loved the view. Space comforted her and humbled her each time she took in its spectacular expanse. Dwarfed by its enormity, Cricket had discovered long ago that words were sorely inadequate to describe it or the feelings wrought from its beauty.
The outpost rotated slowly. Like a planet it deceived one into thinking it was stationary. A floating gray steel ballerina, frozen in a swirl, arms in a circle, spinning in the black sea of space, the outpost was very much active. It had been her home, if she could call it that. But no longer.
She couldn’t even say she missed it. It was familiar, but not a place where her roots reached deep. To be honest, the post was more continuous office than home. When she thought of home, images of a housing container, complete with a husband, a pet, and maybe a well-manicured lawn came rushing forward. Not a seven-hundred-square-foot box onboard an IGO space station.
Things had changed so suddenly Cricket couldn’t quite believe it. She had a hard time trying to wrap her head around it. Numb, she briskly rubbed her arms. What would happen to the other scientists? Ganor?
She sighed. Aggravated with the direction her thoughts had taken, Cricket abruptly changed her focus. Too long she’d been skimming on engaging her life to its fullest, and now her entire life had been cast into the fray. She’d been kicked off her project on Io and arrested. Sergeant Snow could make me feel alive again. He’s got a lightning rod packaged for me. I bet he’d set every single icy block in my belly to jelly .
The roguish hunk pushed her long dormant buttons. She hadn’t been struck by anyone like him in years. Several long years, if she allowed herself to think about it for more than a brief moment, had gone by without so much as a kiss.
At that moment, the spacecraft shuddered and she spilled to the floor. Bathed in the battle mode’s scarlet warning blare, she struggled to her feet and held onto the bed’s footboard for stability.
“Warning, battle red. Warning, battle red. Engage safety protocol Delta 5019-Zebra.”
Cricket grimaced and went to the media center. At once she keyed in her IGO login and called up the outer visuals. Her fingers danced over the touch sensitive screen which, like a well choreographed partner, flickered accordingly. Displays dashed on and hastily vanished as she sped through the options. She managed to keep her balance as the spacecraft lurched ferociously. No doubt the pilot had engaged defensive maneuvers, and the commanding crew had it all under control.
Once she was logged in, the outside visual feed flickered once and the shower of fired laser blasts from the post lit up the sky. The streams whisked by as the spacecraft danced and tumbled, flipped and skidded by them. Poor imagery gave the feed a grainy distorted quality. She could barely make out the circular sphere of the outpost; its gray titanium flesh eerily bespeckled by static. It grew smaller as the distance increased between them. Static continued to rip through the video, bathing the screen in frosted white before winking back into feeble and fluttering imagery.
Staring at the streaming shots and the whirling maneuvering outside, Cricket shook her head in disbelief. Wang wanted her so badly that he risked his own men and those innocents onboard The Inquiry . Project Ganor hadn’t been a large, commercial or economic item for the IGO. A small grant-funded project with a lofty, long-term goal, to be sure, but it was obtainable -- in fifty years. The
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